John Lame Deer

ThatOwlWoman said:
I've heard that falsehood from other Eurocentric racists. First Stinker says that they barely managed agriculture or civilization. But then they're burning down huge tracts of forest. I wonder how the Euros built their cabins, forts, villages, towns, cities, and metropolises w/o wood? :laugh:

Driving game over cliffs is an ancient hunting practice done not just by Paleoindians in N. and S. America, but across the world. As usual Stinker is lying when she claims that American indigenous people used one buffalo out of hundreds killed. Waste of course was inevitable, but meat and hides that were excess were dried and preserved and traded, esp. for foods and items that were unavailable to that locale. There is archaeological evidence that the excess was traded to obtain pottery, grains, other dried non-meat foods, copper (used for decorations), shells, beads made from various materials, tools, toys, and other daily necessities and desires.

Stinker would do well to take a college-level cultural and/or physical anthropology class or two, as I have. I'm fairly sure that that somewhat-teachable simple primate could learn something. She might develop a better sense of how creative and intelligent our ancestors really were, no matter what continent they dwelled upon.
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She does seem to be a bit confused on history. Maybe it's a Canadian thing. They had Residential schools notorious for attempting to wipe out indigenous culture through forced assimilation. The Canadians did to the Indians what the Trumpers are whining "the Gays" are doing to them. Wimps. LOL

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Canadian-Indian-residential-school-system
residential school, school that was part of a Canadian government-sponsored system created and administered by various Christian churches between 1883 and 1996 with the intentions of assimilating Indigenous children to Western culture and expunging Indigenous cultures and languages. Some 150,000 First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children were forcibly taken from their homes to attend residential schools. Not only were Indigenous children physically and sexually abused at the schools, but also thousands of them died and were buried unceremoniously and anonymously—often the victims of malnutrition, fire, or disease spread rapidly through overcrowding. In the early 2000s the Canadian government established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate abuses at the schools, and in 2008 Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a formal apology for the harm caused by the school system.
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Doc Dutch said:
She does seem to be a bit confused on history. Maybe it's a Canadian thing. They had Residential schools notorious for attempting to wipe out indigenous culture through forced assimilation. The Canadians did to the Indians what the Trumpers are whining "the Gays" are doing to them. Wimps. LOL
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We did more than our share of that in the U.S., as well. There are residential school grounds with the buried bodies of hundreds of children.
 
ThatOwlWoman said:
Well, pretty much the entire human population of 20-30,000 thousand years ago practiced similar "primitive" religions. That being said, whatever beliefs came with the various waves of immigrants, it is 100% certain that they have drifted considerably since then.
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A couple thousand years ago, the predominant religions in Northern Europe were polytheistic with defined gods. Same with Hindu god, but not as much further east into Asia and, AFAIK, the Native Americans. The Mayans and Aztecs seemed to have defined polytheistic gods.
 
Doc Dutch said:
A couple thousand years ago, the predominant religions in Northern Europe were polytheistic with defined gods. Same with Hindu god, but not as much further east into Asia and, AFAIK, the Native Americans. The Mayans and Aztecs seemed to have defined polytheistic gods.
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Yep, religions morph over time. Modern Christianity, for one, wouldn't be recognized by a Christian of a thousand years ago, or even 500 years ago.
 
ThatOwlWoman said:
We did more than our share of that in the U.S., as well. There are residential school grounds with the buried bodies of hundreds of children.
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Human history is written in human blood. Romans did the same to my ancestors. LOL

The Mayans and Aztecs practiced child sacrifice. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrifice_in_Maya_culture#Child_sacrifice
Child sacrifice

Mayanists believe that, like the Aztecs, the Maya performed child sacrifice in specific circumstances, most commonly as foundation dedications for temples and other structures. Maya art from the Classic period also depicts the extraction of children's hearts during the ascension to the throne of the new king, or at the beginnings of the Maya calendar.[15] In one of these cases, Stele 11 in Piedras Negras, Guatemala, a sacrificed boy can be seen. Other scenes of sacrificed boys are visible on jars.

As archeologists continue to excavate, more instances of child dedicatory sacrifices are being uncovered. A dig commenced in 1974 at the northern Belize site of Lamanai turned up the remains of five children, ranging in age from a newborn to about 8 years old:

"The conclusion that the five children were sacrificial victims is virtually inescapable... Nowhere else at Lamanai is there evidence of human sacrifice, either of children or adults... However, it is clear that the offering of children as part of the dedicatory activities that preceded the setting up of stelae was not uncommon at any time or place in the Maya lowlands."[16]

In 2005 a mass grave of one- to two-year-old sacrificed children was found in the Maya region of Comalcalco. The sacrifices were apparently performed for dedicatory purposes when building temples at the Comalcalco acropolis.[17]

An excavation at El Perú-Wakaʼ turned up the remains of an infant with, unusually, those of an adult male, in the presence of extensive evidence of feasting that had followed the expansion of a residence which had then been "ensouled" by the rituals and sacrifices. The analysis suggests that the "interments show that human sacrifice was not limited to the royal actors associated with the Classic Maya state, but could be practiced by lesser elites as part of their own private ceremonies."[18]
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ThatOwlWoman said:
Yep, religions morph over time. Modern Christianity, for one, wouldn't be recognized by a Christian of a thousand years ago, or even 500 years ago.
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Agreed. In fact, most Christians today don't recognize Prosperity Christians (Trumper Christians) as Christians. :)
 
Cypress said:
Despite numerous internal differences, most North American Indians’ religions shared several characteristics.

They believed in a powerful and benign “Great Spirit” and a powerful evil spirit or devil.

They also believed in lesser spirits, inhabiting animals, rivers, the Sun, the wind, the trees, and fire.

Everyday activities were surrounded by rituals, which were designed to propitiate and win favor from the spirits.

They believed in an afterlife.

Although the Europeans who met them were struck by the great differences between their own religion and that of the Indians, we can also note some distinct similarities.

Both believed in the body-soul split, in good and evil spirits, in life after death, and in the power of prayer to remedy illness and anxiety.
A flood myth was common among the Indians, as among Christians.
Both groups understood the religious significance of a sacrificial death




Source credit: Patrick Allit, Emory University
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And then the Europeans beat Christianity into the Indians, and stole their lands. And justified as 'spreading the word'. Just sayin'

Native American traditions seem to be focused on the land and nature. It's a shame Europeans didn't have that same perspective of nature.
 
ThatOwlWoman said:
I would love to see Stinkerbelle, or any other random American, be plunked down in their same area, only 500 years ago, and see how long they last. History tells us that the early Europeans didn't fare too well either, exc. for the ones lucky enough to get assistance and teaching from a local indigenous group.
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I think most of us are way to quick to pat ourselves on the back and announce how much smarter we are than people who lived 500 years ago.

Sure we know how to type on keyboards, use smartphones, know how to download apps.

I don't necessarily see that as a kind of innate wisdom or intelligence.

Using a smart phone is a skill, a skill only. But so was making clovis points which are purportedly hard to make.

Certainly the Indians who built Poverty Point, Cohokia, Teotihuacan had substantial skills in surveying, engineering , astronomy, irrigation.
 
Concart said:
And then the Europeans beat Christianity into the Indians, and stole their lands. And justified as 'spreading the word'. Just sayin'

Native American traditions seem to be focused on the land and nature. It's a shame Europeans didn't have that same perspective of nature.
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I tend not to romanticize the religions and lifeways of indigenous Americans. They have sins and flaws like all humans. Ritual sacrifice was practiced, just like it was in the Old World. I don't think they lived in some kind of utopian society.

But the European settlers have to answer for that way they used superior economic and military power to practice coercion and subjugation in often particularly cruel ways.

I do like some of things John Lame Deer says about balance and perspective
 
Cypress said:
I tend not to romanticize the religions and lifeways of indigenous Americans. They have sins and flaws like all humans. Ritual sacrifice was practiced, just like it was in the Old World. I don't think they lived in some kind of utopian society.

But the European settlers have to answer for that way they used superior economic and military power to practice coercion and subjugation in often particularly cruel ways.

I do like some of things John Lame Deer says about balance and perspective
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Agreed Indigenous cultures and religions are as flawed and brutal as others. It's the human way. LOL

The Euros had the tech, which I believe is related to Western Linear thinking, but they were no more cruel than other human tribes.
 
Doc Dutch said:
Human history is written in human blood. Romans did the same to my ancestors. LOL

The Mayans and Aztecs practiced child sacrifice. :)
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At least that is what the conquerors claimed, and which has been somewhat verified by science (archeology.) So? Why is that funny? Christians do too, symbolically, along with symbolic cannibalism. Is not Jesus said to be the "only begotten Son of God," whose Dad had him sacrificed?

Interpreting other cultures from centuries and cultural changes away is fun, but not historically accurate for the most part. See my example, above.
 
Doc Dutch said:
Agreed Indigenous cultures and religions are as flawed and brutal as others. It's the human way. LOL

The Euros had the tech, which I believe is related to Western Linear thinking, but they were no more cruel than other human tribes.
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It would be naive to think any culture is saintly and virtuous.

The indigenous people had insights the Europeans could have learned from. And vice versa.

The injustice was the way the indigenous natural rights to land and liberty were generally ignored. Colonization was going to happen. It just didn't have to happen the way it did.
 
ThatOwlWoman said:
Well, pretty much the entire human population of 20-30,000 thousand years ago practiced similar "primitive" religions. That being said, whatever beliefs came with the various waves of immigrants, it is 100% certain that they have drifted considerably since then.
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I agree about drift.

What I have wondered about is if there are remote vestiges in indigenous American spiritually which has tenuous links to their Siberian cousins.

There seems to be some evidence that the Greek, Persian, and Indian concepts of an immortal soul did not originate independently. They may have roots that go back to the original Neolithic Indo-European tribes of the Eurasian steppes.
 
ThatOwlWoman said:
At least that is what the conquerors claimed, and which has been somewhat verified by science (archeology.) So? Why is that funny? Christians do too, symbolically, along with symbolic cannibalism. Is not Jesus said to be the "only begotten Son of God," whose Dad had him sacrificed?

Interpreting other cultures from centuries and cultural changes away is fun, but not historically accurate for the most part. See my example, above.
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See? Human beings are murderous assholes. It's in our genes. :thup:
 
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